The Amazing Adventures of the Fall Trio

Ellie and Jireh Tarver

Ellie and Jireh Tarver

Age 10-12 category | Fall into Fiction Short Story Contest 2024 | San José Public Library
In fall the leaves on the trees become different colors of red, orange, yellow, and brown. The weather gets colder, too and the wind blows harder. It just so happens that the wind blew a mysterious paper in my way. I decided to show my best friend Ji, the paper. The paper was a treasure map. And that's when the adventure began. According to the map, our first stop was a park.

When we arrived at the park, a beautiful white cat approached us and layed on the floor. The cat looked too pampered to be a stray. The cat had a collar without a name tag. Upon closer inspection, I found a note on the collar. The note read "As soon as you held the map we sent you, you started a journey to find treasure. It is too late to back down now. The cat will assist you on your journey, and its name is Kumo.

Ji decided to go to the second place on the map. We found a mysterious purple rock that turned out to be a portal! The portal lead to another dimension. The dimension looked the same, but was the total opposite of our town. Since it was fall, our town was getting ready for the fall festival so it was lively and noisy. This town was strangely empty and noiseless.

It was dark when we arrived. We suspected nothing at the time. We found a hotel to stay the night. The beds creaked and the blankets had holes and were nearly worn out. Kumo slept on my bed. When We woke up, it was still dark outside. Ji thought he got ten hours of sleep, because he checked his phone. He went to sleep around 8PM and he woke up around 6:30 AM.

Hours passed, but it was still dark outside. So we went on a walk with Kumo, to see if we could find information. As we were walking, the sky opened and a paper fell out. The paper read
"In order to return to your dimension, you must complete two tasks. The first task is to bring the sun to this dimension. The second task is to find a purple stone, like the one that sent you here. Never interact with yourselves from this dimension, for if you do, you will have to complete the tasks within a certain amount of time or else you will be trapped in this dimension, sleeping for all eternity."

We continued walking and saw two people that looked similar to us and they had a cat. The two people looked like they hated each other and the cat was messier looking. I asked what their names were, forgetting the warning from the paper. Their names were Elle, Ji, and Kumo. As soon as they told me their names, a voice in my head said "The time has begun." Ji said he also heard a voice.

As he said that, something fell from the moon. We went to the highest place we could find and it looked like we could reach the moon. I reached out and I somehow managed to touch it. The moment I touched it, the moon broke! Ji somehow managed to fix it. I found a lever and out of curiosity, I pulled it. The moon turned to sun, and task one was complete. The time that was left was displayed in the sky. The time left was 1 day 5 hours 39 seconds. The next day we went to a park and Kumo found a purple rock. We barely finished the tasks before the time limit. The stone took us back home and the wind blew us a note. The note said "You have found the treasure." We didn't know what the treasure was, so we opened the note. The note said the treasure was all around us. We realized that the treasure was the beauty of fall. Fall is so beautiful.
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